LibriVox recording of The Financier, by Theodore Dreiser.

Read by Richard Kilmer.



In Philadelphia, Frank Cowperwood, whose father is a banker, makes his first money by buying cheap soaps on the market and selling it back with profit to a grocer. Later, he gets a job in Henry Waterman & Company, and leaves it for Tighe & Company. He also marries an affluent widow, in spite of his young age. Over the years, he starts embezzling municipal funds. In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire redounds to a stock market crash, prompting him to be bankrupt and exposed. Although he attempts to browbeat his way out of being sentenced to jail by intimidating Mr Stener, politicians from the Republican Party use their influence to use him as a scapegoat for their own corrupt practices. Meanwhile, he has an affair with Aileen Butler, a young girl, subsequent to losing faith in his wife. She vows to wait for him after his jail sentence. Her father, Mr Butler dies; she grows apart from her family. Frank divorces his wife. Sometime after being released, he invests in stocks subsequent to the Panic of 1873, and becomes a millionaire again. He decides to move out of Philadelphia and start a new life in the West. (Introduction by Wikipedia) This is Book 1 of Trilogy of Desire.


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M4B format available


This audio is part of the collection: The LibriVox Free Audiobook Collection
It also belongs to collections: Audio Books & Poetry; Community Audio

Artist/Composer: Theodore Dreiser
Date: 2011-09-15
Source: Librivox recording of a public-domain text
Keywords: librivox; literature; audiobook; fiction

Creative Commons license: Public Domain Mark 1.0

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Reviewer: Nullifidian - - January 13, 2013
Subject: There's no chance of recording the *entire* trilogy, I'm afraid.
At least not for a very long time. These servers are in the U.S., so U.S. copyright law is applied at LibriVox, and works first copyrighted after January 1, 1923 and whose copyrights were renewed are protected until 95 years after their publication date. Dreiser's final novel in the trilogy, "The Stoic", was first published in 1947, meaning it will not be available for us to record until 2043.

But on the bright side, "The Titan", the sequel to this novel, is well within the public domain and has been recorded by the same reader.

Reviewer: orpheus1925 - - November 6, 2011
Subject: Wonderful
Thank you for posting this absolutely excellent reading of a truly brilliant novel - great pick - I REALLY hope you read the entire Dreiser "Trilogy of Desire"! Very glad to have come across this recent reading.